OK, so Dell’s desktop Linux PCs aren’t setting the world on fire. The PC giant has sold about 40,000 of the Ubuntu Linux PCs since introducing them at the end of July. That’s a run rate of about 8,000 per month. And one of those systems was sold to The VAR Guy. So what will Dell do next? End the Linux experiment based on slow sales? Guess again.

Instead of backing off its Ubuntu Linux commitment, Dell continues to see big promise in the technology. The company will likely certify its servers to run Ubuntu Linux. The VAR Guy first reported over the summer and again in October that Canonical — Ubuntu’s promoter — planned to make a small business server push sometime in late 2007 or 2008. Now, reports are circulating that Dell will jump on that bandwagon.

Smart move. There’s a void in the small business server market. Windows Small Business Server is too complex for some small businesses. And neither Red Hat nor Novell have effectively mobilized their businesses to fully unlock small business opportunities.

Canonical working with Dell provides a rather interesting market alternative. Plus, there are strong indications that Canonical’s small business server will involve LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP, etc.), the server stack that’s so freakin’ popular in large enterprises and universities.